Scheduling optimizations for services are described. In one example, a priority category, such as a high, low, or other priority category, can be determined for a service of an application executing on a computing device. If the application is running as a background application on the computing device, an exception to the start of the service can be returned by the operating system of the device, due to background execution limits on the device. In that case, the start of the service can be managed by a service manager of the application based on the priority category for the service. If the priority category for the service is high, the background application can call a foreground service. The call for the foreground service can bring the application to the foreground, and the service manager can again call for the start of the service after the foreground service is running.